Storage technology has been on an aggressive memory capacity growth curve while storage components have conversely become smaller. This technology development has been made possible by stretching the limits of known physical properties in materials with introductions of material innovations and the arrangement thereof. Spacing between heads and media, bit sizes on media, protective films covering components, just to name a few, have all been refined to nano-scale dimensions. As this minimization effect continues, components are becoming more and more susceptible to contamination effects due to typical environmental molecular and super-molecular contaminants, such as dust, moisture, pollutants, and manufacturing and operational by-products. Even with advances in manufacturing technology (such as so-called “clean rooms”) and advances in HVAC systems, such contaminants still manage to make their way into sensitive data storage systems.
Adsorbers are a class of materials that can be solid or liquid and can hold molecules or ions of another substance on its surface. Generally speaking, adsorbers attract and hold molecular layers of gaseous molecules (i.e., molecules suspended, dissolved, or otherwise carried in a gas) by Van der Waal attractive forces. These gaseous molecules can be from the family of acid gasses such as NiOx, HNOx, HCl, SOx, etc., hydrocarbons and even water vapor, just to name a few. Examples of adsorbers include activated carbon, of which there are many arrangements, silica-gel, alumina, and a variety of other materials capable of attracting and retaining target molecules generally having high surface to volume ratios.
Adsorbers have been used by the disc drive industry to a limited extent and in a specific manner. Contained and sealed within a disc drive, adsorbers have been used to take advantage of air flow generated by the spinning motion of the disc moving potentially contaminated air over the adsorber. This air flow can help filter out airborne contaminants generated from out gassing components initially installed within the disc drive. Nonetheless, due to the expense of absorbers, and the fact that disc drives are generally sealed when manufactured in better than class-10 clean rooms, many disc drives do not use adsorbers. Furthermore, users of disc drives rarely consider the impact of external environmental considerations, primarily due to the perceived robustness of a typical sealed disc drive.
Other types of storage devices and media which often are not perceived to be functionally at risk to these kinds of environmental concerns within the current state of technology. State of the art tape libraries, for example, may include sieve or mesh type filters designed to trap solid particulates or dust particles from air entering the library's environment. Yet ignoring the risk posed by environmental contaminants on such sensitive devices and media imperils valuable data stored thereon.
As described above, adsorbers can be used to filter air from airborne molecular contaminants and may be especially useful for preventing corrosion or contamination buildup on structures. It is to improvements related to this subject matter that the claimed invention is generally directed.